They "discovered" a submarine whose wreck has been known for more than a century

Thanks to the national public service RTCG, the Deputy Prime Minister Milutin Simovć (DPS) and the state-owned company Regional Diving Center for Underwater Demining and Diver Training (RCUD) from Podgorica, Montenegro became an object of ridicule in international circles that deal with underwater archeology, but also general history.

Namely, the state television, the deputy prime minister and the head of the state company that deals with diving and, allegedly, scientific research of the undersea, asserted that they found an unknown wreck of a warship in the undersea near Ada Bojana, even though the location, identity and circumstances have been reliably known for as long as 105 years. under which that wreck ended up there.

It is about the wreck of the French submarine "Fresnel" from the First World War, which, due to unfortunate circumstances and acts of war, perished at the mouth of Bojana on December 5, 1915.

The fate of the "Fresnel" and the exact position of its wreck are known to everyone who has ever dealt with military and naval history, as well as to those who have drawn nautical maps of the water area around the mouth of Bojana for more than a century. It is precisely described both in domestic and foreign military archives (even that of the Army of the Kingdom of Montenegro, which did not have a navy), as well as in numerous other historical sources and popular publications.

The only thing that seems to be unknown is the Deputy Prime Minister, the state-owned diving company subordinate to the Government, as well as the journalists of the Public Service, who made a dramatic feature in the RTCG central daily about the "secret lying" in the sea in front of the mouth of Bojana on Saturday.

As announced on Saturday by RTCG, and then reported by numerous other Montenegrin media without questioning, a "battleship" was discovered in the sea near Ada Bojana.

The wreck, which rests at a depth of about seven meters near the southeastern mouth of Bojana into the Adriatic, near the sea border with Albania, but within Montenegrin territorial waters, was seen by two fishermen from Ulcinj.

"After they were sure that there was a large ship at the bottom of the sea, they called the competent institutions and informed them. Soon after, a team of divers from the Bijela Regional Center arrived to carry out the first research, at the initiative of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Milutin Simović," reported RTCG, whose team was on the spot and on that occasion, among other things, took statements from the director RCUD Veselin Mijajlović and his son and one of the diving instructors in that state company, Danilo Mijajlović.

And while it is completely understandable that the two fishermen do not know (nor do they need to know) what kind of wreck it is, what followed from the mouths of the RCUD representatives who went to investigate the fisherman's find at the initiative of the Deputy Prime Minister, created a new national shame, now of international proportions:

"Preliminarily, we can now say: it seems to me that this is a serious ship which, according to these first images and what we have seen so far, looks like a rocket gunship", said Danilo Mijajlović into the microphone of the RTCG team. while his father and the director of that company said that the torpedoes with which it was armed were clearly visible on the sunken ship, that he assumed that there were more weapons in its interior and that he thought "this will be very interesting to investigate further".

However, there is almost no need for further research on this wreck, because everything is already known about it...

"THE SECRET THAT LIES"

The dimensions of the wreck "discovered" near the mouth of Bojana (length of approx. 50 meters) and its characteristic shape (bow design, clearly visible submarine tower in the middle of the deck, as well as deck torpedo tubes) clearly indicate that this is a French submarine. Fresnel" that perished 105 years ago, and of which absolutely all the details are already well known to everyone who deals with naval history and underwater archeology in the international community.

"Fresnel" was one of a total of 18 submarines of the "pluviôse" class built by the French Navy at the beginning of the 20th century.

Built at a time when submarines, as a new type of warship, were still being perfected and did not receive the final technical solutions that would later characterize them, "pluviôse" submarines, instead of diesel or gasoline engines, had steam engines for surface travel, while their torpedo tubes were not incorporated within the so-called solid hull on the bow or stern, they were already in two pairs, placed on the bow or stern part of the main deck.

In addition, on the stern part, these submarines had two special so-called Drzevicki's lowering torpedo launchers, which makes them even more distinctive and easier to identify.

All these features are clearly visible in the underwater footage of the wreck near the mouth of Bojana, which was taken by the RCUD and broadcast by RTCG, talking about the "secret that lies" in that part of the Montenegrin sea.

"Fresnel" was a 553-ton underwater deflammable submarine, 51,1 meters long, 4,96 meters wide and with a draft of 3,15 meters. It was driven on the surface by two reciprocating steam engines with a power of 350 horses each, and under water by two electric motors with a power of 230 horses each.

She reached a maximum speed of 12 knots on the surface, or eight knots when driving underwater.

The submarine, built in 1908, was manned by 25 crew members, and the "Fresnel" carried a combat set of eight torpedoes. Under the command of battleship lieutenant René Stanislas Jouen, the submarine "Fresnel" sailed from its base in Brindisi, Italy at the end of November 1915, with the task of patrolling off the coast of present-day Montenegro and destroying Austro-Hungarian warships that sailed from their base in Boka Kotorska and attacked the allies of the French - the Montenegrins on Lovcen and the Serbian army on the Albanian coast.

Due to a navigation error, however, on the night of December 4-5, 1915, "Fresnel" ran aground on a sandbar in the shallow sea at the mouth of Bojana.

All the efforts of Jouen and his crew to pull the submarine away were unsuccessful, and they were soon discovered in that very awkward position by the enemies: Austro-Hungarian hydroplanes and warships.

The stranded French submarine was encountered by a squadron of Austro-Hungarian cruisers and destroyers under the command of one of the most capable Austro-Hungarian naval officers, the battleship captain Miklos Horti, which on the morning of December 5, sailing along the coast near Ulcinj's Velika plaža, was returning from a raid on the Albanian port of Durres, which was done the night before.

Horti's ships spotted the submarine "Fresnel", but due to the shallow sea, only the destroyer "Warasdiner" headed towards the stranded enemy submarine, whose crew, in a smaller boat, had already mostly taken refuge on a nearby small island and sheltered in low vegetation.

The Austro-Hungarians called on the French to surrender, which Jouen at first refused to do, so there was an unequal exchange of fire between the guns of the Austro-Hungarian destroyer and the guns of the French sailors who escaped from the "Fresnel" to the nearby shore of Bojana.

The shells soon destroyed the submarine, and until the French soon raised the white flag, one Frenchman was wounded and one was killed in the mutual skirmish, and one non-commissioned officer from the "Warasdiner" was also killed.

The Austro-Hungarians captured the French and took them captive, first to Bok, and later to Austria, while the wreckage of the "Fresnel" remained stranded on the beach.

A few days later, a patrol of French soldiers who were helping the army of the Kingdom of Montenegro on the Lovcen front was tasked with inspecting the wreck and determining whether the "Fresnel" could possibly be saved, but they also found that the submarine was too riddled with shells from Austrian guns to could be improved and they made an official report about it, with which they introduced the French command, but also their allies from the Montenegrin army.

The French soldiers managed to remove only its deck gun from the "Fresnel" and took away the seven umbilical cords left by the crew from inside the submarine, leaving the wreck of the submarine to its fate.

In the past little more than a century, the current of water pouring into the Adriatic from Bojana has "submerged" the sand bank on which the destroyed and stranded "Fresnel" lay, so the submarine is now below the sea surface, at a depth of about seven meters. where it was now triumphantly "discovered" by RTCG and RCUD and is being investigated at the initiative of the Deputy Prime Minister Milutin Simović.

Seen from the aspect of international war and maritime law, the wreck of the "Fresnel", even though it is located in the territorial waters of Montenegro, is still the property of the French state.

Since one crew member died on her in a battle with an Austro-Hungarian destroyer - Electrician Petty Officer Augustin (Jean-Pierre Emmanuel) Ducarme, the wreck of this submarine has the status of a war grave and as such, should not be investigated or disturbed.